


your heart is broken black and blue (oh baby, tell me what to do)

by tigerlo



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: A little bit of vanity domesticity, Angst, F/F, so if you'd rather avoid that give this a miss, stay for the comfort though, theres a ton of that too, with a bit of talking about Charity's past and references to prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 17:46:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14430861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlo/pseuds/tigerlo
Summary: “You don’t wanna know about that one, babe."Charity and Vanessa talk about scars.





	your heart is broken black and blue (oh baby, tell me what to do)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little canon fill in scene that really could take place anytime after their reconciliation on 13 April. It's not overly long but was quite cathartic to write so hopefully it's alright to read?
> 
> Shoutout to my vanity enabler @blurryoz for continually feeding my Vanessa/Charity addiction, and for never getting sick of me talking about how attractive I find Charity/Emma. You're doing god's work there, buddy!
> 
> xx

-

 

 

“What’s this from?” Vanessa asks, turning Charity’s hand in her own as they sit on the couch late one night, the house well asleep around them.

 

Vanessa has her feet curled up underneath her with Charity sitting next to her, shoulder to shoulder, one leg crossed over the other, nursing a cup of tea in one hand as Vanessa inspects the other.

 

“Paring knife,” Charity says casually, looking briefly to the scar on the inside of her palm as Vanessa runs her index finger over it.

 

She looks back to the telly, pretending to watch, but Vanessa knows all of Charity’s attention is squarely focussed on her, on the way she’s slowly cataloguing every scar on Charity’s body, even if her gaze is directed away.

 

“Trying to cut Noah a flamin’ apple while the kid was screaming bloody murder, hanging onto my trousers,” Charity adds, raising an eyebrow as Vanessa traces the faded white line again and again.

 

“And this one?” Vanessa asks, moving onto the next, a deeper, nastier looking scar over the heel of her palm.

 

“Chain link fence,” Charity says casually, and Vanessa doesn’t miss the fact that she doesn’t need to look at her hand to recite the source of that one.

 

She raises Charity’s palm to her face, inspecting the scar with a careful clinician’s eye, and if Vanessa didn’t know any better she would have said it was a puncture and tear wound, from one very sharp canine - or a broken piece of wire. It’s messy, the scar, jagged and rough and a little knotted, and Vanessa can only imagine what the original wound must have looked like for it to have left a scar like that behind.

 

She looks to Charity, waiting for her to give over the secret of its source, but Charity doesn’t turn her head towards Vanessa this time, she keeps her gaze steadfastly on the television in front of her instead, her jaw tensed.

 

“You don’t wanna know about that one, babe,” Charity says, and there’s a coldness in her voice now, an emotional removal that wasn’t there a second ago.

 

“Yes I do,” Vanessa says, raising Charity’s hand to her mouth, pressing a kiss over the scar. “I mean, if you don’t want to, that’s…. I don’t want to make you remember something you don’t want to, but…. I’d like to know about all of them.”

 

“I’m not gonna scare you off?” Charity says, an eyebrow raised as she looks at Vanessa, and her tone is nonchalant but Vanessa can hear the hint of fear in her voice at the suggestion, regardless.

 

“You haven’t yet, have you?” Vanessa shrugs, meeting Charity’s eye. “Don’t think it’s likely to happen then, if it hasn’t before now.”

 

She can feel Charity exhale next to her, and for a moment she regrets asking about the scar at all, not because she’s afraid of what’s about to come out of Charity’s mouth, but because the last thing she wants is to bring something up that’s only going to pain Charity to recall.

 

“It was probably a week into starting…. well, you know,” Charity says, and the way she moves her shoulders tells Vanessa that she’s putting her armour on. “I was too bloody green, let someone take me to a park, have me up against a fence to some grim tenement lot. It was…. well, it still hurt then, and I needed something to hold onto, didn’t I?”

 

Charity looks to Vanessa then and there’s a shadow of the old Charity in her eyes, the one who threw barbs to stop Vanessa getting close to her, the one who refused to accept that Vanessa was interested in anything more than sex, and Vanessa isn’t sure what hurts more, recollection of the cause or the fact that Charity’s still preparing herself for Vanessa to recoil away from her.

 

“Sorry you asked?” Charity asks with a cynical huff when Vanessa doesn’t say anything right away, and she moves to take her hand back, but Vanessa isn’t having a bar of it.

 

“No,” Vanessa says clearly. Slowly. _Purposefully_. Linking her fingers between Charity’s. “I’m not. Did it get infected?”

 

“It did,” Charity replies, and there’s something like realisation in her eyes then, finally. A realisation that Vanessa isn’t going to run from her. Not now. Maybe not ever. “That bad I thought the bloody thing would fall off until one night a lady copper found me nicking disinfectant from a chemist, took me to the hospital to get a shot and have it cleaned.”

 

“Did it take a long time to heal?” Vanessa asks her, pulling Charity’s hand into her lap.

 

“Months,” Charity answers, tilting her head, the look in her eyes almost curious, like she’s genuinely amazed that Vanessa is interested in the story.  “Didn’t think it was ever going to.”

 

It’s one of those moment where Vanessa wants to wrap Charity in a layer of cotton wool with a steel skin and kiss and kiss and kiss her until she forgets how cruel this world has been to her, that makes Vanessa marvel at how functional a human being she is when she’s had to give far too much of herself to people who don’t deserve it.

 

“I’m sorry those things happened to you,” Vanessa says carefully, conscious of keeping all trace of pity out of her voice. “I know it’s not much, to say that I’m sorry, but I am. And I wish they hadn’t.”

 

“Everybody’s got a sob story though, don’t they,” Charity says, not dismissing Vanessa’s kindness but sidestepping it maybe, and Vanessa knows that she does her best to shake off everything that life has dealt her, she supposes it’s easier that way, than having to face it head-on.

 

“I don’t think that’s a sob story,” Vanessa replies quietly, and she wishes that she could make Charity see sometimes that she doesn’t have to shrug things off so much, anymore. That she can stop and acknowledge how shitty her world has been because Vanessa wants to listen. “And if it is, I don’t think mine are comparable.”

 

“It’s not a competition though, is it, babe,” Charity says, looking to Vanessa with a softness and a sadness and a _clarity_ that takes her breath away.

 

“No,” Vanessa says, reaching to place her palm on Charity’s cheek, her throat burning when Charity accepts the touch, leaning into it, closing her eyes when their skin meets. “No, it’s not.”

 

It’s moments like these that make Vanessa fall in love with Charity over and over again. When she shows Vanessa the kindness she’s capable of that she hides away from the rest of the world, when she’s so soft that Vanessa aches with her, _for_ her.

 

_She’s beautiful_ , Vanessa thinks, painfully so, because of her scars, and not in spite of them.

 

“I wish nothing had happened to you, just like you wish nothing had happened to me. We’re even,” Charity says simply, but she doesn’t shrug off Vanessa’s touch yet which tells Vanessa how much she needs the small bit of comfort.

 

It’s on the tip of Vanessa’s tongue, the thing she’s been toying with for the last few weeks, the thing she thinks Charity is dancing around saying too, and _that’s_ the thing that almost does it - knowing that Charity wants to take the pain from her past just like Vanessa wants to do hers.

 

“Everybody thinks I’m daft,” Charity says after she’s quiet for a moment, taking Vanessa’s hand from cheek to hold between her own, and Vanessa makes a face in reply but Charity levels her with a glare. “They do, babe. Don’t deny it. The truth of it is though, you don’t survive in that world if you’re not quicker than a hare. You just don’t. The lot of them wouldn’t. They wouldn’t last a night.”

 

“No, they wouldn’t,” Vanessa replies, nodding with a grimace. She knows she certainly wouldn’t. “I don’t know how you did.”

 

“Cause I had to,” Charity answers sadly, shrugging simply. “Couldn’t let the bastards beat me, could I?”

 

Vanessa waits for Charity to pull back then, because this is what happens now, with a slowly increasing frequency as she finally accepts the trust Vanessa has tried to give her from the beginning. She’ll reveal some horribly painful detail from her past, and then she’ll withdraw. She’ll surround herself with landmines and crude jokes while she retreats deep into the place in her mind that she carved a safe house into as a child, when the cruelty began.

 

It’s getting easier for Vanessa to lead her out of that place now though, to take Charity by the hand and show her that there’s kindness waiting for her, empathy and softness too, if she wants it.

 

“No, you couldn’t,” Vanessa says, smiling a small hopeful smile.

 

“Besides, if I had, who’d have rescued you from having terrible sex with men?” Charity says, because she can’t help herself, it seems. Vanessa laughs then, a proper genuine laugh, and when she looks up Charity is smiling too, in a way that she reserves exclusively for Vanessa.

 

“Who’d have rescued me from a lot of things,” Vanessa says quietly, not sure if Charity even hears her, but she thinks she must’ve when she opens Vanessa’s hand, inspecting it like Vanessa was doing to hers a moment ago.

 

“I’m a proper hero, me,” Charity says, raising her eyebrow sarcastically, only she is, actually. She wishes Charity would let Vanessa tell her as much.

 

“Charity Dingle, liberator of closeted lesbians everywhere,” Vanessa laughs, because she knows Charity will accept that in place of an actual compliment.

 

“I’ll be getting a letter from old ‘Lizzy any day now, I expect,” Charity says with a partially-teasing nod, only she throws Vanessa a quick look that says _thank you,_ and Vanessa locks it up safe against her heart, with all the other things Charity says that she thinks might mean _I love you_.

 

She looks back down to Vanessa’s hand, only breaking eye contact when she sees the realisation find Vanessa, and Vanessa doesn’t half marvel at how far they’ve come, that they can sit here in the quiet without needing to fill it with something stupid to justify spending a moment together where they’re not trying to get each other off.

 

“What’s this from?” Charity asks, running surprisingly soft fingers over a scar at the base of Vanessa’s thumb.

 

“A dog,” Vanessa says, her eyes on Charity, watching as she looks so earnestly at the blemish on Vanessa’s skin, a frown between her eyes. “A hurt, scared dog.”

 

Something crosses Charity’s face, then, recognition maybe, and Vanessa feels the need to fill the silence, not just leaving it open and raw. Because Vanessa thinks she knows what it is she can see in Charity’s eyes, and it _kills_ her.

 

“She didn’t mean to bite me,” Vanessa offers softly, and she wants Charity to know that she understands that reflex, better than she thinks Charity realises, that she’s been on the receiving end of it so much that it’s impossible not to.  “I know she didn’t. She wasn’t a bad dog.”

 

It’s so close to a metaphor that Vanessa is sure Charity’s going to sneer or make some unkind remark, but the comment just seems to have hit some deeply considered note, instead.

 

“They often don’t,” Charity says, laughing a little cynically and Vanessa knows she means _we_ , and not _they_. “Just gotta defend themselves, don’t they. They don’t know whether you’re tryin’ to hurt or help them after a while.”

 

Charity looks up at Vanessa, _into_ Vanessa, her eyes rimmed with red, so raw that it feels like a wound has been cut fresh across Charity’s palm, and the significance of the fact that Charity shows her as much makes Vanessa’s stomach twist.

 

“Got a habit of takin’ care of scared broken things, don’t you?” Charity says before she drops her eyes, and Vanessa feels the words hit her like a blow.

 

“That’s not what this is, you know that, don’t you?” Vanessa replies quickly, scooting closer to Charity, bending her head to catch Charity’s eye when she keeps her head bowed.

 

“Isn’t it?” Charity asks, and her voice is almost snappy but there’s a vulnerability and an honest pain there that Vanessa wasn’t expecting Charity to show.

 

“No, Charity,” Vanessa replies clearly, with body behind it. “It’s not.”

 

“You’re not just going to patch me up and set me back on the road again?” Charity asks, and there’s something that sounds resigned, almost cynical.

 

“Do you want that?” Vanessa asks, and it’s hard to keep the hurt out of her own voice but she sees a flash of recognition of it in Charity’s that helps buoy her hope.

 

“Well, you do make a good brew, so….”

 

“ _Charity_.”

 

“ _Alright_ ,” Charity says, hisses in part, and she sighs dramatically, throwing herself against the back of the couch, but she doesn’t let go of Vanessa’s hand. “Alright. No. I don’t.”

 

“Don’t what?” Vanessa asks, even though she knows full well what Charity means.

 

“Vanessa,” Charity says, exasperated, her voice high and annoyed.

 

“Charity,” Vanessa returns in the same tone, and Vanessa knows she’s pushing it, but Charity still hasn’t dropped her hand, and sometimes she _needs_ too.

 

Because sometimes she needs Charity to be the one to put her neck on the line, to give a little bit more emotionally, because this can’t all be one-sided. It can’t all be Vanessa putting her heart on the line every single time, not if this relationship is going to be even. Not if this is going to last, to be sustainable, like Vanessa hopes so desperately that it will be.

 

Charity scowls at her, a proper, deep, reserved for special occasions-scowl, squeezing Vanessa’s hands tight like a reprimand, and for a second Vanessa thinks she might have asked too much, pushed a little too far, and she’s almost ready to fold and apologise….

 

….but then Charity sighs, rolling her eyes so heavily Vanessa would be surprised if it didn’t hurt, and she gives in. Not gives in Vanessa thinks, trying to hide her smile - she meets Vanessa halfway.

 

“No, I don’t want that,” Charity says so quietly that Vanessa has to lean forward to hear her, the volume rising slowly. “I don’t want you to put me out. I want to stay right here with you, where I can keep a bloody eye on you.”

 

It hits Vanessa like a rush, like a drug high, Charity’s words. What they mean. That she said them first. That she said them at all. And before Vanessa knows what she’s doing, her hands are balled in the front of Charity’s sweater - _her_ sweater, if they’re splitting hairs - and she’s kissing Charity like her life depends on it.

 

She pushes Charity back against the couch, feels Charity hum against her in happiness or satisfaction or something and they kiss, _deeply_ , enough for Vanessa to forget about the handful of kids upstairs and contemplate how to get both sets of their clothes off fast enough to satiate the burning in her lungs, instead.

 

“Christ, if I’d known it’d get a reaction like that out of you, I’d have said it _weeks_ ago,” Charity says, smirking against Vanessa’s lips, her hands already finding the bare skin under Vanessa’s jumper at her waist.

 

“Shut up,” Vanessa growls, bucking her hips into Charity’s touch, watching Charity’s pupils dilate like the room’s been sunk into the darkness from bright light.

 

“Make me,” Charity responds, her body turning beneath Vanessa’s as Vanessa moves and climbs into her lap, and it’s a demand almost. A _plea_.

 

It’s something she’s learned these past few months too, to take the moments Charity hands over control quickly, in both hands, managing the balance like Charity is made of brittle glass but not treating her like that.

 

Because she is - fragile that is - far more than she will ever admit, Vanessa knows that she is, and she knows it would be more than enough to drive others off, a damaged soul with a temper like an oil fire and the delicacy of a china cup, but it only makes her want Charity more. It only makes her more determined to show Charity everything she’s so deserving of that everyone else has denied her or kept from her at an arm's length.

 

“The kids,” Vanessa says weakly, her fingers already climbing up Charity’s stomach, slipping beneath her bra to palm at her breast.

 

“I’ll be quiet,” Charity offers around a decidedly _not_ quiet groan when Vanessa’s fingers brush over her nipple.

 

“No you won’t,” Vanessa says, smiling into the next kiss, her hand moving down to pop open the button of Charity’s pants as Charity’s hands tug the neck of her jumper to one side, kissing the juncture of her shoulder before making her way up Vanessa’s neck.

 

Charity bites down on Vanessa’s lip to stop a moan when Vanessa manoeuvres her hand inside her trousers, sliding it between the two of them, against Charity, the heat collected there making Vanessa moan, too.

 

“No,” Charity says, shaking her head. Her voice is low and husky, just how Vanessa likes it best, the ghost of a devilish smile on her lips.

 

“No. I _won’t_.”

 

-

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://tigerlo.tumblr.com)! Come say hi! 
> 
> (also let me know if you enjoyed/whether I should keep bringing these to the surface of my google docs blackhole and not just sending them to my facilitators/fandom friends?) 
> 
> x


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